The biggest problem in Preševo, Bujanovac and Medveđa, towns in southern Serbia with the Albanian population in the majority, is the lack of communication with other ethnic communities, a research on local minority policies in the three municipalities concludes.

The big geographical potentials of these municipalities have not been used sufficiently and many people are seeking jobs abroad. Research has been conducted in the spring of this year, with a view to learning about the legal framework and local regulations.

The director of the Regionalism Centre, which organized the research, Aleksandar Popov, said the research was aimed at showing the functioning of institutions in these three municipalites envisaged by the Law on Local Self Rules, which are municipal councils for international relations and local ombudsmans.

The goal was to see what local policies are conducted in these municipalities when it comes to issues important for the protection of minorities, such as education in their own language, information, culture, official use of language and the representation of minorities in authorities and public services, said Popov.

The research pointed to the necessity of communication among ethnic communities. The Roma national minority is especially threatened in the domain of the realization of basic rights – housing rights and rights to property, which are a prerequisite for the realization of minority rights to education, information and culture.

It is also important to strengthen cooperation with the national councils of national minorities, in order to prepare new and change current practice in that field.

An additional problem is the fact that children of Albanian nationality do not go to the same schools as children of the Serb or Roma nationality, as teachers do not speak both Serbian and Albanian, so they do not have an opportunity to learn how to live together.

There is also a need for the opening of a high educational institution and it has been announced that a department of the Faculty of Economics of the University of Nis should be opened in Bujanovac. While all the three municipalities have cultural centres, libraries and local TV stations in Albanian, there is a lack of TV programmes in the Serbian language.

The research was preceded by contacts in the field with local authority representatives, for the purpose of elimination of possible problems. In additon to the Centre for Regionalism, the Open Society Fund and the Serbian Government’s Coordination Centre for Preševo, Bujanovac and Medveđa as well took part in the research.